High energy impacts may be experienced in vehicle collisions, airplane and train crashes, underwater shocks applied to ships and sea-based oil platforms, highway barrier collisions, abrupt, high level forces applied to airplane landing gear components or between components of any vehicles or machinery, and other physical interactions and may result in extensive damage to the applicable equipment (e.g., the vehicle, ship, airplane, roadside barrier, etc.), and injury to passengers and personnel. Energy transferred during such interactions may either be reflected towards the source applying the energy, accumulated by the receiver, transmitted through the receiver to surroundings, or some combination of these. Accumulated energy may be dissipated, stored and retrieved, and/or converted to another form of energy and used for a desired purpose.
Traditional techniques for protecting objects from being damaged by incident energy pulses are sometimes applied to or integrated into materials used for protecting the equipment. Such materials include the use of elastically deformable components, e.g., coil springs, foam, sand, gels, rubber or other elastomeric materials, welds or other metal anchors, or shock absorbing pads with polyurethane or other similar materials, etc.
Unfortunately, current materials tend to have limited utility in storing, dissipating and releasing the energy from forces applied at high frequencies, high magnitude loads (forces or pressures), or a combination of these in a controlled manner. For example, the energy from vehicle collisions is typically dissipated in part by the vehicle bumper, but much of the energy is reflected back to the vehicle and absorbed by the vehicle chassis and transmitted to the surroundings, resulting in vehicle damage or passenger injury as well as damage to surrounding objects and other people. For high speed collisions, current bumpers are largely unable to prevent extensive damage to the vehicle and serious injuries of the passengers. Similarly, underwater blasts may compromise the integrity of, or permanently disable, ships, submarines, and other underwater vehicles or structures. The effects of collisions and damage arising from inadequate protective equipment are manifested in other areas beyond transportation. For example, air-dropped articles or equipment subject to abrupt and high loads are often mechanically compromised or irreparably damaged upon arrival at appointed locations.
Although improvements have been developed in recent years, for example as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,052,992 (the specification of which is incorporated by reference herein), further improvements are needed still for mitigating the effects of high-load, high frequency impacts caused by collisions or incident shock waves.